Sampler and Shopping and Salads

Happy 4th of July! Hope your day is filled with lot food, fun and fireworks. As for me there hasn't been a whole lot of sewing going on the past couple of days so what I have to share concerns a sampler, shopping and salads. I'll explain.



Here is my Sampler Sunday offering and it has a patriotic theme. This sampler's name is My Hearth & Home by Brenda Gervais of With thy Needle & Thread. Like the sampler I showed 2 weeks ago this has a wonderful "quilty" border (love those half square triangles) a cute house and some humongous flowers. (Do we see a theme?? - hey if I like something I REALLY like it)



Anyway this is only temporarily framed since I can't decide if I want to overdye the piece and antique it up or just leave it alone. I'm still mulling this over. I have a little stash of samplers that feature flags and I'd like to get more of these stitched up. You know how it is... so much stitching little time.

One of the reasons there was so little production the last couple of days was that there was some substantial shopping going on. There was a trip to Waynesville for more charm packs. I got "Tweet" but they don't have any yardage yet. I'll show this when I get my background and border. This collection features adorable birds. I like birds as well as chickens. I'm an equal opportunity devotee of fowl. I've even got a pattern in mind for this project.

Saturday was a great shopping adventure. My dear friend Stephie accompanied me to a shop we'd been to last September on the Tri-State Shop Hop. The shop is called Sulphur Grove Quilt Shop and it is in Huber Heights. I have been pining over a bolt of fabric I saw there 10 months ago. It was a wild and crazy fabric called Hippie Chick and I knew it would make a fantastic Stack-N-Whack quilt. (Sidenote - I haven't revealed my obsession with Stack-N-Whack before. I LOVE SNW - off the top of my head and because I'm too lazy to get my butt out of the chair and actually find them all - I believe I have made at least 9 SNW quilts. There are also several UFO SNW's too. One week I'll take pics of all my SNW's and give you a mini quilt show of my obsession.) Meanwhile back at the ranch....Stephie and I went to Sulphur Grove and if a good time is measured by how much you spent we had a very very very good time. First they still had the fabric ---- omg!!! I still LOVE it!!


Hippie Chick by Marcus Brothers Michelle D'Amore designer.

This is a HUGE repeat - 24"- so I will be making BIG blocks. I bought enough for a block with 8 repeats so I could do big Lemoyne Stars. It is probably my favorite block for SNW. But wait there was more ......

This is a layer cake and additional yardage from the Tranquility collection by Sandy Gervais. This collection is several years old and somehow it escaped me when it first came out.


And I already had this panel with these great birds in my stash.




Which of course leads me to want to do a quilt with these birds. I was sooooo happy to find this layer cake (and it was marked down - yippee) and the yardage for a border and sashing (also marked down). I also got an old American Jane piece and an older Blackbird Design piece featuring samplers. Oh I love a fabric that embraces several aspects of craftiness. The shop had lovely samples and several patterns also went home with Stephie and me. It was a lovely day!

As for salads, I spent the morning preparing goodies for dinner tonight. Pasta salad, tabouleh, marinated tomatoes and chilled strawberries and watermelon. All I need is someone to put the steaks on the grill while I fix the corn on the cob an baked beans and we will have a feast. I figured you didn't need to see pics of them sitting in their little knock-off tupperware containment units, so use your imagination.

I hope everyone has a wonderful 4th of July! I plan to celebrate the rest of the day by relaxing and sewing. While I have all the blocks done for the Cherry Salsa quilt I still don't have the rows sewn together. Gotta get it done, so I can start something new.

Happy stitching.

carol fun